How Obiex turned uncertainty into one of Africa’s fastest-growing crypto exchanges

Fadekemi Ajakaiye

Billions in processed transactions. Over 100,000 users across three African markets are moving millions of dollars daily. Those are some solid numbers for Obiex, a four-year-old homegrown crypto exchange built by an entrepreneur who was first introduced to Bitcoin in 2016.

On paper, Obiex is one of Africa’s fastest-growing digital finance platforms. But behind those numbers is a story of resilience, improvisation, and reinvention. What started as an early attempt to help merchants accept crypto payments has now grown into one of the continent’s most trusted on- and off-ramp exchanges. And soon, a digital bank.

Its rise wasn’t smooth-sailing. Rather, it was steered through storms of crisis and adaptation to changing user behaviour.

An early experiment
In 2016, crypto’s appeal in Nigeria was largely speculative. Bitcoin was trading at a minimum, and conversations about adoption focused on curiosity rather than commerce. Yet for Jerome, then an electronics and computer engineering student at Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Awka, it wasn’t to be dismissed as just another trend.

Jerome’s entrepreneurial streak runs back to childhood in Anambra State, where he helped his parents with their businesses. His mother was a teacher and businesswoman, his father a trader. By secondary school, he was raising funds as a chapel prefect for the construction of said chapel.

Outside these, he had flipped Blackberry phones, run a small real estate brokerage, and built an e-commerce directory to bring merchants online. But when a friend introduced him to Bitcoin, he quit everything, including the tutoring that had helped him make ends meet, to focus on researching and educating people about crypto.

“When I started telling people about it, the first major feedback I got was how little use they saw in it,” he recalled. “They would say, ‘Unlike the money in our bank accounts that we can spend on almost anything, crypto is hard to use’. Then, I left school to build something around it.”

From that came Paylot, a crypto payment gateway built to help merchants accept crypto and get settled in local currency. The idea was ahead of its time, workable as a concept, but years too early for mainstream trust. With many Nigerian merchants still coming to terms with online payments, crypto still had a sci-fi feel.

Jerome began laying out the ideas for Paylot in 2016 and sought developers in 2017. After jumping from one coder to another, he finally found a place with Onyedika Igili, CEO of Afrivelle, an Enugu-based software development firm, who later joined as co-founder. Tragically, Onyedika died in a car crash in 2018, just before the product was ready for launch. Chidozie Ogbo, Victor’s co-founder and CTO at Afrivelle, continued where he left off and eventually became Paylot’s co-founder.

When users pave the way
As Paylot’s user base grew, a pattern began to emerge. One user who wasn’t a merchant started using the gateway for something it wasn’t designed for: sending crypto payments to himself and paying out in naira. It was a clue to a larger unmet need. At that time, the market had very few off-ramp options.

The team quickly realised that while merchants weren’t quite ready to accept crypto, others were desperate for a fast, safe way to convert it. In response, they built a stripped-down tool, OTC.paylot.co, a one-page interface for easy liquidation.

It spread fast. Word of mouth from traders and freelancers who used it to off-ramp crypto made it popular. It was simple, instant, and reliable — qualities traders value most.

“What we did was give users cell addresses. When they set up with them, they generated wallet addresses. They didn’t have to use the platform to trade because anytime someone paid crypto into an address, settlements were made directly into their local bank accounts,” Jerome explains.

The product was working, accumulating users and generating traction, until the small experiment laid the foundation for what would later become Obiex.

In 2021, the business rebranded to reflect its larger, more structured vision. It became Obiex — from “Obi,” meaning king in Igbo, joined with “X” for exchange, together meaning King of Exchange. The platform kept its focus narrow: users could send crypto to a wallet and receive fiat automatically. “Reducing time to value” became a mantra, guiding everything from interface design to backend execution.

Just as momentum began to build, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) issued its 2021 directive banning banks from facilitating crypto transactions — a move that sent shockwaves through the industry and forced dozens of startups to rethink their strategies. For Obiex, whose payment rails suddenly needed a thorough refix, it was less the end of the road and more a cue to pivot once again — a skill the team had already mastered from surviving an earlier product collapse.

They paused operations, reassessed user needs, and built again, this time for peer-to-peer (P2P) traders. At this point, traders no longer needed payment gateways; they wanted to move fast in a volatile market, which meant the main problem wasn’t access but timing. Transactions could take minutes to confirm, during which prices could swing wildly.

Obiex’s response was an ‘instant swap without confirmation’ feature. It allowed traders to lock in value at the point of transaction, converting volatile coins into stablecoins before network confirmation delays could hurt them. It was part hedging tool, part reliability feature.

This new approach became its signature, turning the platform from a payment utility into a trading essential.

Built with perspective

By 2022, Obiex had developed a loyal community. High-net-worth traders, OTC customers, and professionals started using the platform for its simplicity and execution speed. As of November 2025, the company has processed nearly $20 billion in transactions over the past four years, most driven by referrals and repeat users rather than paid marketing.

Internally, the company’s structure mirrors its product ethos. Lean, fast, and collaborative, these qualities proved vital when, in late 2022, a surge in NFT transactions clogged the Bitcoin network and threatened to freeze trading. The lead engineer found a workaround within hours. “It was a threatening moment for the business,” Jerome, whose leadership style leans on trust and autonomy, recalls. “But it showed us what we were made of.”

Such episodes shaped the company’s culture of practicality and adaptability, an ethos that is reflected in its users, many of whom trade to survive economic instability.

Now, Obiex wants to evolve into a digital bank, building a suite of products that mash DeFi efficiency with the familiarity of traditional finance. Expansion is already underway across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Cameroon, and South Africa, with licensing processes in motion.

Its mission remains. Through every pivot, it stayed focused on making crypto trading as simple and human as possible. All points in its development have drawn it closer to that goal.